City, police seeking to ban live music at plush North Beach wine bar

Musicians could be banned from performing at a North Beach wine bar because of a long-running crackdown on entertainment venues around the nearby rowdy Broadway strip.

Dell’uva, a plush but understated single-story wine bar on Green Street between Columbus and Grant avenues, applied for city permits needed to host live performances by DJs and other musicians.

“I want to have different jazz bands and Latin funk stuff – not really any rock and roll,” Dell’uva owner Juri McCorkle said Tuesday. “Just ambient music – stuff that people can hear from the street and that attracts their ear. Then, from time to time, we’d have a DJ that would plug into our regular stereo.”

The Planning Department recommended that the Planning Commission during a hearing on Thursday reject McCorkle’s permit application, after it received emails from North Beach Police Station Capt. James Dudley.

Dudley routinely asks the Planning Department to reject a variety of permit applications filed by entertainment venues in the North Beach neighborhood, which his officers must patrol during rowdy early mornings after strip clubs and bars close.

Dudley asked the Planning Department to reject Dell’uva’s permit application. He said it previously hosted DJs without obtaining a permit and that it illegally created a “mini-beer and wine garden” during this year’s North Beach Festival.

“In my opinion,” Dudley wrote in an email to the department, “the premise, as is, cannot adequately contain noise.”

A handful of neighbors sent letters to the department opposing the permit application, with some complaining about overcrowding and noise at the venue.

A petition sent to the department was signed by more than 20 neighbors and patrons who supported Dell’uva’s permit application.